What was going on in Kosovo at
the time? In July 1999, Dzemail Zeinulah, a Rom from Kosovska Mitrovica,
told his story to the Association of the Romany of Croatia:
I guess you’ve heard of the Mahala in Kosovska
Mitrovica. That’s our community. That was our community. If only I could
return... But what’s there to return to, burnt-out ruins? They set fire
to my house. And... what a beautiful house it was. I’d been building it
all my life. Worked for a company, but in the afternoons – brick by brick...
And the flowers around the house... a garden... everything to one’s heart’s
content.
Okay, not only mine. There were much nicer
houses in the Mahala. Many with two floors. We (the Romany) had our own
stores, a barbershop, a hairdresser, and even two bakeries. Just imagine
how all that has been plundered and burnt.
There we stood on the other side of the Ibar
River and saw it all with our own eyes; clouds of smoke rising, all our
sweat burning up in flames... more than one thousand five hundred homes.
We stood there silent and still, more than six thousand of us Romanies
watching our lives expire. The smell of freshly baked bread was replaced
with the stench of scorched ruins. We kept on looking - tears streaming
down our cheeks, sounds of bawling babies here and there....
We’re a funny people, a damned people: we
don’t want war, but war wants us.
And it’s always been that way. And how nicely
the Albanians are repaying us: We sent our children to their schools, we
spoke Albanian, and many Romanies registered themselves as Albanians, since
many don’t know how to speak Romany. That was convenient for them because
they could show the world how many Albanians there are and how Kosovo is
theirs. How nicely we’ve been repaid: now Kosovo is theirs, and only theirs.
NATO came and then came KLA. They all have
guns, machine guns, pistols... and knives in their hands. They know: the
Romanies have no arms. They burst into our Mahala, from house to house.
They tell us: Get out or be slaughtered.
What will I (now) live from? I lost my pension,
my house, and after hundreds and hundreds of years I’m to search for a
homeland. They didn’t even let us take the smallest little things with
us, just the clothes we were wearing. Who fled, fled. Only our dervish
headman Aziz Azemi stayed. He’s a cripple, so how could he flee? And he’s
a religious person and as they say, one of the same faith as theirs. So
Aziz stayed on in his ‘tekke’ (religious shrine) and they set fire to the
tekkes and our Aziz was inside. We heard that everybody who didn’t flee
was killed.
As for us, we scattered anywhere we could.
A couple thousand ended up at
Zvecara in Kosovo where they were placed
in a camp together with the Serbs.
Blace camp (Macedonia)
We went on foot in the direction of Novi
Pazar [a town in southwest
Serbia]. Nothing to carry, but the voyage
is tedious. My wife, two sons, a
daughter-in-law and me.
In Novi Pazar they placed us in some kind
of a camp. There are Romanies
here from everywhere in Kosovo - from Pristina,
Kosovo Polje, Tavnik,
Podujevo, even from Djakova. There are thousands
of us in the camp.
There are very many Serbs and Montenegrins,
and then there are Turks,
Croats. We got acquainted with a woman.
She was Slovenian. All alone. She
just stares hard at nothing and keeps on
repeating: ‘Oh God, is there
justice on this Earth? What wrong have we
done? What wrong have we done?’
In the camp there is no food, no medications...
The Serbs are starving together with all of us. There are no clothes. There’s
no place to wash, and all that we have is what is on us.
I see: evil is spreading! The world doesn’t
want to know about us. Yet I
know how it was before. We all had satellite
antennas. We saw how the world
welcomed the Albanian refugees in Macedonia
and in Albania. The world cried
over them. Those same tears don’t exist
for us - for us, who didn’t flee
on command to get the world to have pity
and to be on our side.
We don’t exist... That I see. There is no
returning to Kosovo, because the
Kosovars are none the Montenegrins, Serbs,
Turks... they (Albanians) are
the only Kosovars... And that’s that!
Foreign politicians say NATO will form a
militia made up of Albanians, the
KLA members. The very same ones who plundered
us, burned our homes and
drove us away will protect us. From whom?
I see, evil is spreading and so
we decide on Sarajevo. We stayed there with
some kinfolk for a short time.
We see things are pretty tough here, too.
Our kinfolk paid our way to
Croatia, which we crossed over into illegally.
A sacked Rom house (by
Theo Fründt)
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